For the second year in a row, Stephen (my husband) and I, self-professed "Gretchies" for about five years now, have had the unbelievable honor of doing a mini presentation at one of Gretchen Bernabei's writing workshops. We had a blast, learned a ton (AS USUAL), and we were able to share a few of the things we've been doing with her stuff while using technology. Here are some of the links we promised to provide in our presentation today:

Here's our prezi on the few items we demonstrated today on mixing technology and writing.

Here's the actual pages that Stephen and Kayla (me) use with our students as we are teaching writing.

Here's my Pinterest page full of LOTS of great stuff to try in your classroom (with technology, of course!).

Here's a list of the things we mentioned today:

Prezi: a zooming presentation tool that's WAY BETTER than power point! Ok, if you've already made your lessons and presentations in power point, then you can PREZIFY your power point slides! Check out their website to see how. They make it so easy!

Weebly blogs: by far the safest, easiest and our favorite-est blog site for students and teachers. Your students can have their own blogs and they can all be connected to you.

Skitch: an easy way of annotating documents and pictures (we use this to "color up" student writing). You can add text, draw lines and pictures, add stickers, add other pictures, blur things out, and more. If you have iPads (or some other tablet) in your classroom, have your students color up a piece of writing together! (this is connected to Evernote, by the way!)

Evernote: A great tool for keeping notes, clipping things from the internet, and even keeping track of your students work (whether it's for the steps of a research paper, as Stephen demonstrated, or easily creating student portfolios). You can access your notes anywhere there's internet access, or if you have the app, you can see your notes at any time.

Google Drive--log in to your Gmail account (or create one) to access your FREE 15 GB of free space to store things (like Dropbox), and to create, share, and comment on documents. See how Stephen uses it to give his students feedback here.

Screencast-o-Matic: a way to make, store and share videos (You can see a video Stephen made for one of his students' essay here).

Haiku Deck: a quick and easy presentation tool (they have a GREAT selection of beautiful background pictures!).

Aurasma: this is that incredibly cool thing we showed you that lets you take a picture of something (that acts like a trigger) and connect it to a video of your student(s) talking/reading/performing. The possibilities are endless! You can have kids do book reviews, read their writing, explain a word from the word wall or a concept you've learned in class, or you can record yourself teaching/asking/explaining something and have kids access it in a center/station activity. Here are some great step-by-step tutorials made by Two Guys and Some iPads for you to learn how to use Aurasmas.

By the way, all of the sites listed above can be accessed on the web or as an app for BOTH Apple and Android products. We, of course, prefer our Apple products! :) Try them out and let us know what you think! If you have any to add to the list or you've done something cool with any of these, let us know in the comments or send an email our way!

That's all for now, but tune in next time when I talk about one of my favorite things: APPLE TV!! I'll also talk about these OTHER great things we've used: Schoology, Draftin.com, Todaysmeet.com, Socrative, and Padlet. See you soon!

Thank you for the tech suggestions! I too am a Bernabei Wannabe!
She came to Montgomery in August and what a way to kick off the year! I look forward to improving my tech skills in the ELA classroom via YOU!!